Editor's Note

Dear Fellow Space Elevator Enthusiast,

I have two links that I want to draw your attention to:

First is an article in the Scientific American called “Space Elevators Are Less Sci-Fi Than You Think.”

Secondly, is an interview for the podcast “Materials Inside” that took place at the Graphene Engineering Innovation Center and features Adrian Nixon. Adrian’s portion begins at the 21-minute mark, but he doesn’t start talking about space elevators until about 52 minutes in if you just want to skip to that.

I also want to let you know that I will not be publishing a newsletter in early January but look forward to the next contribution in February. In the meantime, enjoy the holiday season!

Sandee Schaeffer
Newsletter Editor

President's Corner

by Pete Swan

Permanent Space Access Infrastructure Characteristics
THE Starting Point

Space Elevator Team: I have been thinking—I know, I know, a wonderous event, and even during this holiday season…maybe too much time to visualize – besides the holiday fun…

Please read the below and think about it as you fill the role as spokesperson for Space Elevators. We definitely need to stay our course in building a huge body of knowledge at ISEC and address the major issues facing the development of space elevators. However, as we have been talking about communities and customers and then potential missions—I have come to the conclusion that our discussions with outreach targets should be based upon transportation capabilities!!

Space elevators’ remarkable transformation capabilities as a permanent space access infrastructure dwarfs traditional space access approaches. We must develop this idea so that it is in the forefront of all our discussions within our outreach. Transportation Infrastructures, as the baseline, provide to the user:

  • Permanent, daily, and routine

  • Massive movement

  • Safe

  • Inexpensive

  • Environmentally friendly

  • Storage facility at train stations (our GEO and Apex Anchor)

  • Assembly and repair areas (above the massive gravity of Earth at GEO and Apex Anchor)

  • Rapid transit (in our case to Moon/Mars)

  • And others

If we start with funding discussions - or other topics - the audience will continually be comparing to their favorite rockets. There will be plenty of time to explain the architectural design issues; the hurdles we face; and, then the engineering test plans to mitigate these issues. However, we must start discussions with the top level transformational characteristics of a permanent space access infrastructure. As such, we must have the audience “go to a higher level” and think about the possibilities, instead of the difficulty of fulfilling our dreams. These are important thoughts we MUST consolidate within our team so our future discussions are based upon, and start with:

Characteristics of permanent space access transportation
infrastructures illustrate and free the imagination!

Pete

Architecture Note #41

by Michael A. Fitzgerald
Senior Exec VP and Co-Founder
Galactic Harbour Associates, Inc
Space Elevator Transportation & Enterprise Systems

The Future Space Architecture –
Places to Go

Personal Prolog

This is an Architecture Note. It is the opinion of ISEC’s Chief Architect. It represents an effort to document ISEC’s ongoing science and engineering discussions and is one of many published over time. Most importantly, it is a sincere effort to be the diary, or the chronicle, of the multitude of our technical considerations as we progress; along the pathway developing the Space Elevator.

Michael A. Fitzgerald

History tells us that civilization grew up around transportation, like harbors, rivers, and railroads. Space Elevators are the transportation core of the coming Space Architecture. History will repeat.

Let us talk about the Space Architecture. It needs to be something more than an idea…It needs to be a place, and the Space Elevator/Galactic Harbour makes it a place; a transportation place...the next two Architecture Notes will explain.

As I concluded in Architecture Note #5, January 2017:

Permanent Space Elevators are where the coming
Space Infrastructure will be; they will be “Places”

In early 2017, it was this notion of “place” that got me thinking; will our Space Elevators be a place; a destination? I have been around; I have seen a lot of places. Some places are just places – by accident. Most of the places are places for good reasons. New York and Boston each have a harbor; a good reason to be a place. I am sure there are similar good reasons for Atlanta, Paris, Shanghai, Rotterdam, Rio de Janeiro, Singapore, and lots of other important places. Then there are those other places for apparently no reason. Have you ever been to Lincoln, Nebraska? I love Lincoln, Nebraska. In the context of transportation, it is a great place to pass through; but why is it there? (Salt as a product and a university) Some locations are in the middle of nowhere. They became places to hang out after they became places for no reason. The Space Elevator has reasons to be a place, like New York, because it is a transportation hub. Let’s examine that assertion.

I Pondered a Conclusion (in 2017)

Let’s start with the GEO Region as a place (the Earth Port and Apex Anchor also). Is the GEO Region a place with a reason like New York? Or is it a place in the middle of nowhere; to just pass through? I happen to think wherever we have Space Elevator activity --- THAT wherever will become a place. For example, New York became a place because it had a natural harbor. After it became a place, other things started happening at that place. As a Port of Entry, Wall Street, Fulton’s Fish Market, the Bronx Zoo, Broadway, and the museums were established because New York was lucky enough to have a harbor. Eventually, cruise ships stopped there.

Now in my mind, the Space Elevator’s GEO Region is not just a place to just pass through. As a place, it is more like New York and its harbor. It is different than Lincoln, Nebraska; or Gallup, New Mexico. The GEO Region will be part of a larger thing. It is a port of entry and part of the Galactic Harbour.

It also seems that the GEO Region will be a place where commercial space businesses will start hanging out shingles. The shingles will say Space Elevator refueling, GEO Region satellite repair, Space Elevator power station, Space Elevator Zoo, the GEO Region Fish Market, or Space Elevator transfer tugs, and so on. It will be one hell of an important place. Eventually, cruise spaceships will stop there. 😉

In addition, the Earth Port seems like a “real” destination for significant businesses to support their operations in the GEO Region Such entrepreneurs would include food services, logistics support for operations, the operations center on the Floating Operations Platform on the equator, and of course cruise ship stop-overs.

The transportation aspects of the Earth Port cannot be undervalued as that is its purpose – changing the direction of mission and logistics hardware from horizontal to vertical – up and out to the solar system.

Then there is the Apex Region’s unique capability to be a transportation hub – a “real place.” This would include the departure – the release - from the Apex to anyplace in our solar system. The unique capability is to reduce travel time to key destination–such as 14 hours to the Lunar region, or as fast as 61 days to Mars. This transportation power comes from the added latent velocity of any mass at the Apex until release from the Apex makes it real--sort of an interplanetary sling shot. This added delta velocity augments any delivery system’s ability to provide “on-time” delivery. This will be a boon to the growth of businesses and governmental missions. Massive release of cargo towards mission destinations will be remarkable…the Apex is more than a place to pass through!

An implementation of this remarkable permanent space access infrastructure will create several “places” while enabling so many missions. The support will not only be for traditional missions, but for missions only achievable by Space Elevators. I’ll speak to that in the next “Note.”

In Closing

A dear friend of mine once said, “I am not always right, but I am always certain!” In the sense of that assertion--I am certain that the Earth Port, the GEO Region, and the Apex Region will become places--places that will be the core of the coming space architecture. I am certain.

Fitzer

An Exciting Year

by Pete Swan

Welcome to the end of the third year of the third decade of this remarkable century. Can you image how we got here? Or how much fun we have had? Or what great progress in space elevators we have achieved? Or just the realization that we had a great Thanksgiving celebration (for the US households) and are approaching Christmas and the new year? This note might seem premature, but, as we are not having a newsletter at the turn of the new year (thanks Sandee for all your hard work over the last 10 newsletters) I thought a quick look back would be worthwhile (from our newsletters):

Of course, we have had great successes in our outreach, but we could definitely use more reach and breadth. Each of the following items have significance of their own, but by putting them together, it reflects our progress and new found hope. These three major themes were identified (as explained in our newsletters this year) and will be essential for the future:

1. The Space Elevator will be transformational in all aspects of getting to orbit, operating in orbit, and saving our planet (at so many levels).

2. The climber/tether interface study resulted in remarkable insights and conclusions – like: our study created the trade space for analysis of the climbability of the climber on a tether. We see much work ahead, but currently, it seems likely that a 20 t climber will eventually be able to lift 14 t of payload.” Much more of the document will be released soon.

3. Our 2022 study of Dual Space Access Architecture will point out that the strengths of space elevators are so remarkable that the space community MUST include a dual access strategy to accomplish great missions beyond LEO.

During the past year, your support of our newsletters ensures we are keeping up with the progress of space elevators. I have especially appreciated the work of David Raitt and his “History Corner.” The description of our eight distinct architectures was vital. Adrian Nixon keeps us up to speed on the new aspects of Graphene Super Laminate inside his Tether Materials sections – particularly the terminology.

There were information pieces that opened up our understanding of the space elevator. One with significant impact on our future was, "Modern Day Space Elevator Baseline Concept" (Mar 2022).

We are actively supporting our study teams that deal with topics like energizing the Dual Space Access Architecture study, finishing up the Tether/Climber interface study, and kicking off the 2023 ISEC study describing the Apex Anchor. Each of these studies have many contributors to ensure a broad look at the topic and major insights achieved.

The coverage of major conferences ensured each reader was “almost there” in the sense of understanding what happened. We reported on:

  • International Space Development Conference (NSS) in DC in May

  • ISEC virtual Conference in Aug

  • International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Sept in Paris

Our major output this year from the Green Road to Space Committee was the Space Elevator Academic Challenge to stimulate students from around the world to contribute to this task:

Select one Mission that would be important for humanity’s future which would be enormously enhanced by relying on Space Elevators as a robust and “green” access to space.

Each of the above activities has been significant and will contribute to the body of knowledge ISEC is responsible for. We are progressing in the concept development/refinement and making some headway in outreach programs. Please have safe end of the year celebrations and come back in the new year with a re-energized plan to continue to contribute to this wonderful mission:

Develop, build, and operate space elevators!

Tether Materials

by Adrian Nixon, Board Member, ISEC

ISO Standards for large-area sheet graphene

Regular readers of the tether materials section of the newsletter will know there are three candidate materials. Of these, graphene is the most likely material that can be made in the quantities needed for the tether. Dear reader, you will also know that graphene can be manufactured in two forms, as a powder and large-area, one atom thin graphene made by the chemical vapour deposition (CVD) method. Look closely at the copper foil in fig1. and you can actually see the one atom thin layer of graphene as a lighter, slightly more silvery coating on the majority of the right-hand side of the metal surface.

picture 1

Figure 1: Graphene powder and one atom thin large-area CVD graphene on metal foil.

Powdered graphene is enjoying commercial success as a performance additive conferring enhanced mechanical and electrical properties on many other materials.  However, it is CVD graphene that is the tether candidate material.

The International Standards Organisation (ISO) has an important role to play in specifying the sequence of methods for characterising the structural properties of graphene as well as the language used to describe the material.  This is documented in ISO/TS 21356-1:2021 [1]. This international standard is the culmination of several years’ work by an international team representing all the interested countries of the world. 

Impressive as this ISO standard is, it is worth noting that this just applies to graphene powders and dispersions made form graphene powders.

However, work has just started on a new graphene standard.  The technical committee responsible for creating these standards is called ISO/TC 229. The chair of the committee is Dr Denis Koltsov.

Denis contacted me a few days ago to let us know that the International Standards Organisation is now beginning to develop the standards for characterising CVD graphene.

picture 2

Figure 2: The International Standards Organisation announcement about the structural characterisation of large-area (Chemical Vapour Deposition or CVD) graphene.

This is very good news.  It means that the international community is taking CVD graphene seriously, and this will lead to agreement about which methods should be used to measure and characterise the one atom thin layers of material you can see in Fig1.

The ISO standards will focus the attention of the international technical community, and this will help drive the development of measurement techniques for CVD graphene. 

The manufacture of graphene as a tether material will need to be made as a high-quality product. The international community is beginning to get organised, and these standards will lay the foundations for future quality control and quality assurance methods of the future.  Thank you, Denis, we wish you and your global technical committee well developing these standards.

References:

1. Anon (2021). ISO/TS 21356-1:2021. [online] ISO. Available at: https://www.iso.org/standard/70757.html. [Accessed 21 Nov. 2022].

2. Anon (2022). ISO/AWI TS 21356-2. [online] ISO. Available at: https://www.iso.org/cms/%20render/live/en/sites/isoorg/contents/data/standard/08/34/83449.html?browse=tc [Accessed 21 Nov. 2022].

An Opportunity Taken

by Peter Robinson
Fellow, British Interplanetary Society
Engineer, ISEC

On November 28-29, I was volunteering for the British Interplanetary Society at their annual “Reinventing Space” conference held this year at the Aerospace Museum in Bristol. I was involved in pulling together presentations from the many speakers who had been scheduled by the team, but for the second day it became clear that we had a gap. We'd been given just two names for a four-person panel; one of those two never responded to any emails; and then the day before the other told me he couldn't attend!

I remembered that any problem should be considered an opportunity, and as the second day was all about Space Energy, it seemed that a sensible option would be to add some material about Space Elevators (SEs). All of us at ISEC know that there's no other launch method for sufficient mass to contribute in a meaningful way to the Earth's zero-carbon energy needs. But what could be added at short notice, and with the agreement of others in the RIS Team and the Space Energy (SBSP) people leading the Day-2 schedule?

I decided we could start by showing David Dotson's excellent video of his IAC2021 presentation on climate action, electricity demand and the launch mass bottleneck (watch it here on the ISEC YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/0pye9TTQXm4) The Space Energy 'names' who were leading the session knew David and were happy to go with that.

That video was only 10 minutes, and we had 40 minutes to fill, so how could we move forward with more about SE, especially to an audience more concerned about shorter-term challenges? The clear solution was to discuss graphene super laminate, our front-runner material for the SE tether with countless other applications in the aerospace arena, and who better to talk about that than Mr. Adrian Nixon (ISEC Director, Chair for Tether)!

We had a few hours to arrange something. Adrian was 150 miles away, but of course distance is no object now, so after a few quick messages we agreed a plan. Adrian would pull together some slides (see https://www.isec.org/space-elevator-tether-materials), and I would set up a Zoom call and confirm the schedule with the rest of the event team.

The plan worked. David's video ran, Adrian spoke, and we had time for several insightful and interesting questions before the essential afternoon coffee break.

This was an excellent opportunity to spread the word on Space Elevators to a wider audience including a number of senior people in the UK space industry. I've already been contacted by one delegate asking for Adrian's contact details.

Peter

History Corner

by David Raitt

Revamped Space Elevator History Page

ISEC recently appointed David Brandt-Erichsen as a new volunteer web guru for the ISEC website. For one of his first tasks, David had a look at the Space Elevator History page and has implemented a number of suggestions and recommendations which has improved the look and feel of the page.

One of the most notable things is having the Quick Links at the top of the page with the image at right. The Introduction has been rewritten to emphasize the latest space elevator architecture, currently the eighth. A new section has been added which provides access to some of the main historical space elevator documents listed according to their architectures. The History Corners taken from the various ISEC Newsletters now link to the actual text rather than the complete newsletter.

Still to be done is to provide access to the Oral Interviews; however, this depends on exactly where the digital records are stored! Work is afoot to locate them. Another new section to be added in the near future will comprise photographs of some of the main space elevator pioneers and stalwarts over the decades.

As in all websites, pages continually evolve and add new material. The Space Elevator History page, with the assistance of David, will continue to do so too!

2022 International Symposium on the Peaceful Use of Space Technology – Health 

The International Academy of Astronautics co-sponsored a large conference in Beijing, however, the COVID arena turned it into a largely zoom set of presentations. Topics crossed the whole space arena and were quite comprehensive. We had a Space Elevator track (19 Nov 2022) that encompassed the following topics:

In “Space Elevators are the Transformational Permanent Infrastructure to GEO and Beyond,” Pete Swan starts at 21min30sec into the recording listed below.

In “International Space Elevator Consortium - Research and Studies,” Dennis Wright starts at 1 hour 15 min 30 seconds into the recording.

In “Cooperative Game Method based Dual-phase Control Strategy for Floating Partial Space Elevator in Cargo Transportation,” Dr. Gefei Shi starts at 2 hours one minute 29 seconds.

The recordings can be accessed through this connection on our website: https://www.isec.org/2022-ipspace

Upcoming Events

International Space Development Conference
Sponsored by the National Space Society
https://isdc2023.nss.org/
"A New Space Age"
Thursday, May 25th through Sunday, May 28th, 2023|
Dallas-Frisco, Texas, USA

74th International Astronautical Congress
Sponsored by the International Astronautical Federation (IAF)
https://www.iafastro.org/events/iac/iac-2023/
“Global Challenges and Opportunities: Give Space a Chance”
Monday, October 2nd through Friday, October 6th, 2023
Baku, Azerbaijan

75th International Astronautical Congress
Sponsored by the International Astronautical Federation (IAF)
https://www.iafastro.org/events/iac/international-astronautical-congress-2024/
“Responsible Space for Sustainability”
Monday, October 14th through Friday, October 18th, 2024
Milan, Italy

76th International Astronautical Congress
Sponsored by the International Astronautical Federation (IAF)
Monday, September 29th through Friday, October 3rd, 2025
Sydney, Australia

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